Black
by StillWaters1
Summary: A short, purely descriptive piece involving torture, hence the rating.


Title: Black

Author: Still Waters

Disclaimer: "Farscape", its characters, and its situations don't belong to me – they are the property of The Jim Henson Company, Rockne S. O'Bannon, the Sci-Fi Channel, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia, and the wonderful actors who bring them to life. No copyright infringement is intended – they have been borrowed for the reader's enjoyment and to challenge my writing abilities only.

* * *

Black – no other color was meant to cover the form. The traditional absence of light, warmth and life – the signature of purest evil, the end, and yet the body regressed to a beginning. It was desperately clutched into the fetal position, rocked by violent spasms that should have dismembered it long ago, trembling in the aftershocks still strong enough to throw it off the table. He was no neonate in this moment – he had lived lifetimes of this single blink of time. His mind frantically clung to the body's roots, as if vainly trying to start over, to end this moment, these constant moments, and to begin anew. Yet it continued - the muscles, tendons, the very fibers of being and structure tightened to what should have been past the breaking point, then suddenly disintegrated leaving limbs that floundered, as if every bone had been shattered into fragments as numerous as those the mind had become.

The scream. Nothing should be able to produce that scream. With more strength than a quantum singularity it plowed through that living system until the outside atmosphere reached in with jagged, greedy claws and slowly…. steadily……… deliberately tore the auditory product of villainy from its roots. One could shudder as the rawness enveloped them, could feel the deaths of millions of cells along the throat as they shook and swelled with the intensity, shrunk away from the evil, shriveled, and let go, swept along the horrific cry to their deaths.

Drought would have been a welcome characterization. The cracked, exposed pink of the throat was more barren than any lack of moisture could relate. One could almost see the slight clouds of dust as the screams emerged – not from disuse – far from that – these were the clouds of cell debris, the remains of what had kept moisture in that now mutilated lining. The throat and mouth took on the convulsive movements of the rest of the body, desperately attempting to restore coolness to the searing flesh. Constant strings of swallowing attempts would soon be replaced by the sickening gulps of air that resulted in his utter fatigue. Each sound a miniature moment of choking, a weak gurgling – the moisture his throat so frantically sought blocking his air intake, only to vanish when breathing and hurried swallowing resumed.

Oxygen. During the height of the convulsions his body rejected it, in the aftermath he fought for it, in the rare spaces between, the element struggled to enter the ravaged system and fill the deprived lungs. At the peak of the excruciatingly induced convulsions the screams left little time for breathing, the constricted muscles blocked out the life-giving element, and the heart struggled to gain control of a mind trying everything it could to make the darkness a place of peace. When they abated, his chest expanded to the point of explosion, striving vainly to fill itself with life, an instinct the mind couldn't squash. When the instinct receded into the mind, so did the oxygen intake recede as the tide. His breathing became shallow, slowing as much as it could until instinct forced itself back to the mind's surface.

His knuckles were whiter than pulsar light, fingers dug far into the flesh. Blood ran in intermittent rivulets down his palms, veering off at his wrist, then creating a waterfall to the ground. The depth and force of fingernails on pliable skin left bruises as black as the moment and cuts as jagged as the evil behind it.

His face. Once colored with life the skin was now translucent, the paleness mapping out intricate networks of vessels, reluctantly moving blood. The mouth torn between harsh grimaces of pain, snarls of anger, and a rough, chapped mass that produced those horrific cries. Flaring nostrils vainly attempted to assist the mouth, hard lines around the eyes clenched so tightly that the eyelid was hardly a separate entity. During the pained peaks the familiar blue-gray of his eyes was imprisoned in the upper reaches of the skull leaving what should have been pure white. Even that tiny piece of anatomy wasn't left unscathed. The utter force of the convulsions destroyed tiny vessels, splattering the once immaculate surface with bloody stains. What was most frightening were those rare moments of consciousness when his eyes were open. The gray-blue that once appeared to be clear as an ocean, gentle as a sky, the looking glass through which a deeply compassionate soul lay, was polluted, overrun with vicious storm clouds, and cracked mercilessly.

Sweat ran down the furrowed brow, the unseeing eyes, taking the place tears should occupy. Tears were not possible – they come from sparks of innocence, love, life. Those were long gone. Instead, the beads born of excruciating pain and unspeakable evil glimmered in the dim light, moving in a smooth, easy dance down the face. They reached the chin and hung there, twinkling like individual crystals on a chandelier before plunging to the death and darkness they were born from. If only they ended there. The laws of nature were harsh – the particles from those tiny products of pain would be reabsorbed by the atmosphere, would condense, and reappear, maybe not in this exact place or time, but they would return.

A bone-shattering cry erupted from the very depths of his soul, his body desperately trying to make itself smaller. A single bead of agony was torn from the safety of his lower lip. As it plunged toward the ground, a spark of light caught it, reflecting a frustrated, yet content leatherclad face. As it exploded into minute particles on the cold floor, Scorpius shook his head, smiling – "Oh no John, it will never be that easy."


End file.
